Bipolar 2, Mother of 3, Partner, Human

Month: September 2017

I started writing this blog in the fall of 2015. Over the past two years, I have used it to ask and answer questions about my life, some vital, some less so. In large part, writing a post is, for me, a means of spitballing with the world, and myself, about whatever question is making the most noise in my head at the time. Today that question is this: What’s next?

Now that I have been stablish on my medication for about a month, what is the next step, the next thing to be done, the next goal to achieve before moving on to the one after that until I finally reach the place where it all feels like normal to me again?

I had recently spent a great deal of time trying to figure this out for myself before remembering I have paid experts who can tell me these things. So, I asked my therapist. Specifically, because it is football season and I am a dork, I asked her if there is a goal post now and, if so, where is it? Unfortunately, her answer was basically to punt (ha!) and say that, at this point, what well and good looks like to me is for me to decide and then work towards. I considered objecting as non-responsive but thought better of it because (a) not a lawyer anymore and (b) she’s most likely giving me the most responsive answer there is. I just don’t like it.

For more than a year now, I have had a relatively detailed map to follow away from sickness and towards wellness. I went to treatment. I changed medications. I resigned from my job. I went to therapy. I changed therapists. I changed doctors. I changed medications, again. I lived many, many weeks focused on making it from my bed in the morning back to my bed at night without doing or saying anything harmful to myself or others. It may have looked like I was just puttering around the house and hanging out with my family but, believe me, I was fighting for my life some of those days. A lot of those days. That’s the thing, or one of the many things, that’s hard about mental illness, right? Other people can’t see it. They can’t see the pain or anger or fear or sadness. They can’t feel those things either. They can’t feel what it is like to fight back against those things using the same weapon that is trying to kill you: your mind. It is a fucked-up thing to be fighting with your own mind, not to mention your heart and your soul. It hurts so much you want to die. And some of us do.

I didn’t die, obviously. And now I’m not on the front lines everyday battling for my sanity. So, what do I do now? Obviously, maintaining my mental health requires a myriad of tasks, daily and weekly, but does not fill up every minute of my day. Those extra minutes are currently filled with kid stuff and house stuff. I’m also trying to write more, more on this blog but mostly for other platforms like mental health websites. I’m also in the very early stages of maybe sort of pitching a book but I’m not fully committed and so mostly it doesn’t get worked on. And, really, that’s my problem, or my question. Does well and good look to me like a mom who writes from home in between drop-off and pick-up? Or a full-time attorney who is also a mom and a wife and a human in her spare time? Or a part-time attorney trying not to work full-time hours? Or something else entirely?

Does it look like a person with the ridiculous good fortune to workout (mostly outdoors) five to seven days a week? And who gets to go to hour-long therapy sessions weekly? And doesn’t have to worry about when to squeeze in her med checks or her (three!) children’s doctor and dentist appointments?

What do I want to be when I grow up? That seems to be the question I’m asking, which feels a bit childish, but also appropriate. I did grow up to be a full-time attorney, mother, wife, and individual. Then, due to genetics and circumstances, that life, my life, fell apart, it disappeared, and now it’s gone. So the question is do I want to re-build it, or do I want to build something else? Of course, this is all assuming I have the financial ability and buy-in from my partner to do something else which I am hopeful I do; also there’s the practicality of having the expenses but also the time and emotional resources required to care for three kids who are not even in school yet.

The more I think about it the more my doctor’s question seems to be an appropriate one for deciding what I want to do next: what does well and good look like to me?

Well and good, to me, looks like a whole day of feeling like a pretty good mom who wasn’t too stuck in her own head to notice what the little heads around her were up to, who didn’t yell or cry (much) because of stress or symptoms of her illness, who said yes as much as she reasonably could, and laughed.

Well and good looks like waking up without a sense of dread or panic because of ALL THE THINGS that need to be done within the span of that single day. I spent years waking up like this and whether it was a symptom of my illness or a cause I don’t miss it and I don’t want it back. I want to wake up feeling ready to do what needs to be done but not overwhelmed by it. I also want to have space in my days that make me curious, time that I’m not sure how I will spend but will (most likely) get to spend the way I want to, or the way I need to because of some unforeseen emergency that would normally throw my whole, tightly-knit plan the day into a tailspin of anxiety.

Well and good looks, to me, like being a wife who is more often happy then angry with her husband because of who did or did not do what needed to be done. It also looks like having the time and emotional resources to be the one who does all the things because her husband simply can’t due to work commitments (and vice versa). It looks like having the time and inclination to be something other than co-parents and financial partners.

To me, well and good is purpose and meaning consistent with my mental wellness but not too cautious to be truly challenging and even a bit scary. Well and good is, in large part, taking care of family. But well and good is not a life of regularly scheduled, relatively manageable tasks with a few surprise challenges sprinkled in. Purpose and meaning come from being a mother and wife but also from being myself, from doing something, or many things, that give me pleasure and a sense of accomplishment.

Now, I just need to figure out what that something, or many things, are. Next question.